Medical Transcriptions and Errors

Outsourcing medical transcriptions
The medical transcription business is a tough one. Jobs get outsourced from the United States to the Philippines. Americans lose their jobs and get mad. Then the client company suddenly realizes that the rate of mistakes is much higher overseas and brings the job back to America even though it costs five times as much for labor. At my company we are also terrified to hire anyone at any price, because errors are disasterous to us. Our clients get mad when you make an error with their listings, and fixing the problem and dealing with irate customers is not worth the savings in our personal time to do the work ourselves. Sometimes its less work to do something yourself.

Indian medical transcription
Many Indian medical transcription companies sprung up over night a few years ago and then lost the majority of their business. The level of experience was just not the same as what it is in America, and the level of mistakes was higher.

What do accuracy figures mean?
So, what does 99.9% accuracy mean in any case? One blog I read describes it in these terms: 99.9% accuracy means that on a form with 5000 entries, you will have an average of five errors, and the chance of having no errors is only four percnt. So, 99.9% accuracy means 4% accuracy.

In my words, 99.9% accuracy means that only one field in one-thousand will have erroneous information, assuming the company boasting this level of accuracy is telling the truth. So, you need to figure out what the cost is in having an error.

The cost of errors
If each error costs you $100, and you save $200 on labor, to fill out one-thousand fields, and get one error that costs you $100, you are ahead of the game. On the other hand, what if you can find a company overseas which has a comparable rate of accuracy that U.S. companies have? Then, outsourcing medical transcriptions is the correct thing to do.

Test medical transcription companies out.
The main point to remember is that new companies have to be tested. You can’t really believe their references, although some references are better than none. You can test out a well reputed company and see how they really are to work with in real life. If your experience is good, then you can offer them a little more work, and gradually over a year or two, give them the majority of the work.